


The Girl in the Graveyard

by sherdocnatural



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, I actually finished this in less than a month, I'm damn proud of myself, Inaccurate representations of pretty much everything, Original Fiction, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4137981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherdocnatural/pseuds/sherdocnatural
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I was a kid, there was this park. Nothing too fancy; a few swings, monkey bars, a slide, and a tiny playhouse that didn't really belong there, but had been present for as long as anyone could remember. The park itself was fairly unremarkable. It was the placement that made it odd.</p><p>Clearwater Park's next-door neighbor was Clearwater Cemetery. And, as a result, the park didn't have many visitors. Who really wants to take their children to play next to a bunch of dead people? "Be careful, Suzie, don't run into Mrs. Russel's headstone." Umm... no.<br/>--------------------------<br/>Inspired by this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/345510602639972827/<br/>Hope you enjoy <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl in the Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine.

I was painfully shy when I was little. Very quiet, very calm, very invisible. I was the shyest kid in my class, and, due to the other kids either ignoring me or getting annoyed when I sat passive to their attempts at friendship, I had no friends.

I spent most of my time in my backyard, playing in the sandbox, or playing fetch with Alroy, our Irish Setter.

I grew up a bit, started feeling anxious in loud spaces or around people, and started shutting myself in my room. Sometimes it was only for a couple of hours, sometimes it was for a week or more. But eventually I'd had enough. I was starting to get cabin fever from hiding in my room all the time, and I decided a new hiding place was in order.

It took me a few days to feel capable of leaving my house, but one Saturday, when I was about twelve, I discovered the park.

Despite the day of the week, it was completely empty. No one was around at all.

I found it comforting. I sat down on one of the swings, closed my eyes and let my legs dangle, content to soak in the solitude for a while.

After a few minutes, I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle, as if someone was watching me.

I opened my eyes and looked around. Seeing no one in the park, I scanned the cemetery.

There, perched on top of a headstone, was a girl dressed in short shorts and a flowery/paisley tank-top. She swung her bare feet through the air to thud back against the rock. She looked about my age. Maybe a little older.

"Hi!" I called out in a burst of unexpected confidence. I waved. She turned to look at me, and hesitantly raised a hand back.

"Can I come over?" I asked. The girl nodded. I hopped off the swing and made my way over to her, carefully avoiding stepping on the graves.

I paused next to her, unsure of what to do now. I didn't talk to people. I rarely _saw_ people. Why did I think I could talk to her? She watched her feet swing, apparently absorbed in the rhythm.

"Should you really be sitting on the headstone?" I said at last. She stopped kicking and turned her gaze on me. I flushed under her soft brown eyes.

"I mean, it seems wrong to disrespect someone's grave like that." I mumbled, looking at a vague point over her left shoulder.

Her lips quirked in a half smile.

"She doesn't mind." the girl said. Her voice was a bit lower than I'd expected, and a little rough. Like she needed to clear her throat.

"Oh." was all I said in return.

She didn't seem inclined to speak further, so I sat down next to the headstone, resting my back against the sun-warmed rock. She started kicking again. We sat in companionable silence for a long time, not really acknowledging each other, but content with our proximity to another human.

Roughly an hour later, I noticed how low the sun was, and checked my watch. Yep, supper time.

I stood up, and brushed the grass clippings from my shorts. I turned to the girl, who was already looking at me.

"I have to go home now." I announced. Sorrow flashed across her face, quickly replaced with an expression of indifference.

"Fine." She said, uninterested, looking back at her kicking feet.

I watched her for a moment, then made a decision.

"I'll be back tomorrow." I said.

She glanced at me, then back at her feet. "See you tomorrow, then."

"Yeah. Tomorrow. Good." I mumbled to myself, nodding, and walking away.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized I never asked for her name. I kicked myself when I realized I also never told her mine.

 

Supper was quiet. My oldest sister, Ida, was still working at Clearwater's only bar (creatively named Bill's Bar, after the owner), and my mom was still visiting our Great-Grandma Rosaleen, who was in a retirement home in the city, so the only person around was my older brother, Aidan.

Like me, he doesn't talk very much. He made one attempt at conversation ("So... How was your day?" he asked, focused on cutting his ham. "Pretty good." I replied, carefully scooping corn onto my spoon. "Good... Good."), and then decided he'd made enough of an effort with me, and we finished eating in silence.

After supper, I went up to my room, and sat on my windowsill, looking out through the glass. It was mid-summer, so it wasn't dark yet, even though it was closing in on eight o'clock. I realized I could see the park from my window, and spent the rest of the night wondering why I'd never seen it before.

 

At one o'clock the next day, I went back to the park. As soon as it was within my range of vision, I looked for the girl. She was sitting on the same gravestone as yesterday, still kicking her legs. It didn't really look like she'd moved since I'd left.

"Hey." I said when I was within earshot, waving hesitantly. Her head snapped up, and she raised a hand, waving and gesturing for me to come over. When I reached her, she got down off of her perch and acted like she was going to hug me, but then she seemed to think better of it. Her arms swung gently at her sides.

"When I got home yesterday, I realized I never told you my name," I said quietly, offering a hand, "I'm Raegan."

"Donna." her hand was cool in mine, despite how warm it was outside.

"D'you wanna play on the swings?" I asked, already backing in that direction.

"Sure." she nodded, and followed me to the swing set. We took turns pushing each other for a while, but we got bored. We were both too tall for the monkey bars, and neither of us liked the slide very much, so we went to the strip of land between the park and the cemetery, and laid down in the grass. I stared up at the fluffy clouds, content with the silence.

"Raegan?" Donna asked after a few minutes.

"Yeah?"

"What's your favorite color?"

"Umm..." I thought for a second, "Probably blue. Why?"

"Well, I was thinking," she said, "We're friends, right?"

"Are we?"

"Aren't we?"

"I dunno. I've never had a friend."

"Well, I'll be your friend."

"Okay." I smiled at the sky, "And I'll be yours."

There was a long moment where we didn't say anything. I knew, instinctively, that she was smiling too.

"We should probably get to know each other better, then." she said at last.

"Okay." I agreed, "My turn to ask a question. What's your favorite animal?"

I could hear the smile in her voice as she answered, "Giraffe. Favorite holiday?"

 We talked all day. She taught me how to make flower crowns out of dandelions and clover while I told her what my favorite flavor of ice cream was.

My first flower crown was made out of dandelions. I accidentally made it too big for either of our heads, so I put it around her neck while she told me about spending her falls at her grandparents' apple orchard, helping with the harvest.

She crowned me with clover blooms while I told her about my family, and my dad's death.

I braided clover into her curly brown hair while she explained why math was her favorite subject in school.

She rubbed dandelions on our arms, showing me how they dyed my pale skin differently than they dyed her brown skin, while I talked about my brother trying to teach me how to play basketball. She was particularly interested when I told her he was teaching me so I could play with him and his friends.

"So, what, they just let you play with them?" she asked, weaving clover into a long chain.

"Well, yeah." I replied, carefully slitting a dandelion stem with my thumbnail, "Why wouldn't they?"

She hummed 'I don't know' and started talking about a diner she went to when she was eight, and how amazing their burgers were.

After a while I realized the shadows were getting long, and I stood up, disrupting the flowers I had piled on my lap.

"Hey!" Donna protested, brushing my flowers away from hers, "Be careful, I'm braiding here."

"Sorry," I apologized, picking my clover out of her chain, "I just realized how late it is. I have to go home."

"Oh," she bowed her head, concentrating on her clover, "Okay."

I started picking up all of my things, delicately donning the necklaces, and being very careful to not let my crown slide off my head. When I was positive I had everything, I stretched, and said, "Well, I'll see you later."

"Mmkay." Donna mumbled, apparently absorbed in her weaving.

I gave an awkward half-hearted wave, and turned to go. I only got a couple steps before she called me back.

"Raegan?" she sounded like she was trying really hard to be indifferent.

"Yeah?"

"Will you..." she looked up at me, "Will you come back tomorrow?"

"Yeah." I smiled.

She beamed back at me, and I never told her this, but the way the light from the setting sun hit her, it made the dandelion crown I'd given her glow, and her brown eyes sparkle, and her hair shine golden... And she looked ethereally beautiful.

"See you tomorrow then." she said, snapping me out of my slight daze.

I nodded, my smile widening, "See you tomorrow." I promised.

 

This became the routine. Every day, after lunch, I'd run down to the park, and hang out with Donna. When it started to get dark, I'd go back home.

 

Days turned into weeks turned into a month turned into a month and a half, and then I had to go to school. I waited until the very last minute to tell her. I guess I thought that by not saying anything, maybe I wouldn't have to go. But, as the sun started setting on the last day of summer vacation, I accepted that school was coming. And no amount of avoidance was going to change that.

"Donna," I reluctantly began, staring at a blade of grass beside her left knee.

"Yeah?" sensing my uneasiness, she put down the leaf she'd been examining, and looked at me with concern, "What's up?"

"I... I don't know how often I'm gonna be able to come around anymore."

"What? Why?"

"School starts tomorrow." I confessed to the grass.

"Oh." she said blankly. Indifferently.

I looked up at her so fast I got dizzy, but the nausea might've been from panic. Her eyes, which were usually warm and friendly, were cold as steel, and closed off, like someone had slammed a door shut behind them. She looked like she did when I first met her. No. Worse. Back when I first met her, she had the smallest measure of hesitant friendliness, a tiny glimmer of hope shining from behind her eyes, barely allowing itself to exist.

That glimmer was absent now.

"I'll still come," I hurried to say, "As often as I can. It just... It probably won't be everyday now."

"I should've known better than to get close to you." she said coldly, picking up a twig and poking the dirt with it, "Everyone leaves me, in the end. I should've known you would too."

"No!" I was indignant. How dare she think I'd leave her. "No, look, I don't want to go to school, okay? It's just a thing that has to happen."

She didn't answer.

"Donna."

She kept poking the dirt.

" _Donna._ "

She dug the twig in deep, twisting and jabbing until a chunk of earth popped out of the ground, out of the twig's way.

"Donna!"

"What."

"Donna, look at me."

She turned to face me, but her eyes looked just to my right, avoiding mine.

"I. Don't. Want. To. Go." I repeated, "I don-"

"But you're going anyway, aren't you?" she snapped, finally looking me in the eyes, and making me regret wanting her to. She was angry. So angry. She continued, "You know what, Raegan? You can spend the rest of your life convincing me that you don't want to go, but it's not gonna change the fact that tomorrow at one fifteen, you're not gonna be here. And the day after that, at one fifteen, you're not gonna be here. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after _that_. And then the weekend will roll around, and I'll get my hopes up, and you'll be too busy with your life to even _think_ about me."

She was standing now, trembling with emotion, tears streaming down her cheeks. I reached out to touch her, to comfort her, but she flinched away, refusing anything I had to offer. My hand fell to my side.

"That's... That's not what gonna happen." I said thickly, my voice choked with the tears brimming in my eyes, "I won't-"

"'Not what's gonna happen', ha!" she spat bitterly, "I've been through this before. I get close to someone, they promise they won't leave, and then, sooner or later, _something happens_. Sickness, or school, or a move, or _something_. And then they're gone. _Everyone. Leaves. Me._ "

She whipped around, stomping off to the headstone she's always sitting on. I scrambled to my feet, running after her.

"Leave me the _hell_ alone!" she shouted over her shoulder, stopping me dead in my tracks, "I _never_ want to see you again! I _HATE_ YOU!"

I stood there, frozen by her words, for what felt like forever and only a second at the same time. Only when the long shadows crept into my view did I realize how late it was, and stumble home.

 

I didn't eat supper. I didn't respond to Ida when she snarked at me for eating the last of her favorite granola bars. I didn't acknowledge Aidan when he told me my favorite show was on. I didn't answer Mom when she asked what was wrong.

I quietly went upstairs. I quietly went into my room. I quietly shut the door behind me. I quietly laid down in my bed. I quietly pulled the covers over my head.

And wailed.

 

 I didn't learn anything for the first month of school. I was too upset to pay attention to things I didn't care about.

Everyday, on my walk home, I'd take a path that went past the park, hoping to see Donna again.

She was never there.

Sometimes I thought I heard her crying, but no matter how hard I looked, I could never find her.

 

Eventually I grew doubtful of my memory.

Did I ever meet anyone in that park? No one else was ever around, so I was the only witness to her existence. Did Donna ever actually exist? Or did I dream her up?

Slowly, without even meaning to, I began to forget her.

 

Time passed, and soon I was 16. Celebrating my first boyfriend, and my first car, and never once thinking about Donna.

Eighteen, and I graduated high school, valedictorian.

Twenty-one, and Laura, my girlfriend of six months introduced me to alcohol, and I woke up the next morning with a massive hangover... and a chicken. We still don't know where the hell we got a chicken from, but we creatively named her Hen, and kept her as a pet.

Thirty, and mourning the loss of my mother, who had a heart attack in her sleep. Ida sent me home after the wake with a hug and two boxes.

I'm thirty-two as I'm writing this now. A couple months ago, I finally got up the nerve to open the boxes from my mother.

The first box was what I'd inherited from her, and it made me cry. I could never bear to tell her what I wanted from her when she died, so she picked things out for me. She gave me her jewelry box, with all the jewelry she owned still in it, apart from what she was buried in, and a necklace that Ida had always adored. She gave me her photo albums, which I had fond memories of. And she gave me her favorite shirt (a black t-shirt with a simple silver moon printed on the front).

If I buried my face into the fabric, I could still smell her.

Taking deep breaths, I opened the other box. It was full of things I'd lost or forgotten to grab when I moved out the second time. A couple stuffed animals, a few books (that, upon further investigation, turned out to be sketchbooks from my later teen years), a few pairs of pants that were mistaken as mom's when she did a load of jeans, and... a diary.

I read through it, and noticed that a girl named Donna was mentioned consistently since the first page, but disappeared abruptly after August 27th, just six weeks after I met her. The timeline then jumped straight to October 10th, and Donna was never mentioned again.

I thought back and found I had hazy half-memories of a girl sitting on a headstone. That must be Donna.

According to the diary, I was very good friends with Donna. Apparently, I also had an enormous crush on her. I wondered what happened that made us split up.

I decided to look her up, see if I could find her. Maybe we could work out whatever went wrong, and be friends again.

 

I couldn't find her. I scoured every yearbook I had, and searched every website I could think of, but a first name and a blurry, half-remembered face from twenty years ago is not enough to go on. I called Ida, and then Aidan, asking if I'd brought Donna over to play, but apparently 12 year old Raegan kept secrets. They'd never even heard about Donna.

 

I was obsessed now. I had to find her. I had to know she was real.

 

I took a trip to Clearwater and asked the residents if they remembered Donna. The answer was a consistent 'nope, sorry dear' that was equal parts frustrating and discouraging. Maybe I _had_ made her up. Maybe she was imaginary. Maybe-

"Yes, I remember Donna." Mrs. Thomas said, nodding in a rocking chair in the Clearwater Senior Center.

Maybe not.

My eyes snapped up to meet hers, excitement bubbling under my skin.

"You..."

"Yes. Pretty, with brown hair and brown eyes, right?" she asked.

"Yes!" I clasped one of her fragile hands in mine, "Do you know where I can find her?"

"Same place she always is, dear," she said, gently squeezing my hands, "Sitting on that headstone in the cemetery."

 

I walked-not-ran to Clearwater Park, ignoring the loud slapping my feet made on the wet concrete, not caring that the drizzling rain was steadily soaking me. I was going to see Donna again.

I squinted through the rain, scanning the cemetery.

There. One of the headstones had a figure sitting on it, their head bowed in the rain.

I paused for a second, self consciousness rising inside me. I spent days, _weeks_ , looking for a woman I met twenty years ago. A woman I was friends with, sure, but when we  split up there must've been a reason.

What if we fought over something serious? What if she hates me? What if I hate her, I just don't remember it? What if-

I trudged forward before I could talk myself out of it.

As I got closer, the figure on the gravestone grew more and more detailed.

She's kicking her legs. Her hair is long enough to hang in a curly curtain around her face, hiding me from her view. She seems to be wearing shorts. It looks like she's barefoot.

I stopped about ten feet away.

I opened my mouth, but words I couldn't think of were clogging my throat. I pressed my lips together, trying to think of something to say. Then I smiled.

"Hi." I said over the patter of the rain. The figure stopped kicking.

"Can I come over?" I asked.

She nodded, keeping her head down.

I walked closer, mindful of the graves, stopping when I was close enough to touch her.

"Donna?" I asked.

She pushed her hair behind her ear, and looked up at me, a smile spreading across her face.

My stomach dropped out through the soles of my feet.

It was Donna, alright. And she hadn't aged a day.

I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat, fear making me panic.

"What are you?" I choked out, slipping in the mud, "What the fuck are you?!"

The smile had vanished by now, and she looked confused.

"Raegan?" she asked, sliding off of the headstone and hesitantly stepping closer to me, even as I scrambled away, "Is that you?"

" _St-stay back!_ " I yelled, holding a hand in front of me in warning, stopping her in her tracks. A look of hurt settled on her face as she processed my terror.

"Raegan..." she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

I found my footing and ran.

 

A few days later, I got up the courage to go back, hoping and praying that Donna wouldn't be there.

She wasn't. Or if she was, I couldn't see her.

Either way, I went up to the headstone she always sat on, and finally, _finally_ read it.

 

 

_Beloved Daughter_

                 Donna Barrett

          3/18/1964 - 6/2/1978

_A free spirit_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Donna was born in Clearwater on the 18th of March, 1964.
> 
> In 1970, her mother died of cholera, leaving her with her father, older sister, Susan, and younger sister, Kelly.
> 
> Her father was an abusive drunk, who accidentally killed Susan one night in 1975. When he awoke from his drunken stupor and realized what he had done, he killed himself.
> 
> Donna and Kelly were sent to an orphanage in Middleton, a town a few miles West of Clearwater.
> 
> In 1977, an epidemic swept through the orphanage, killing almost half the children, including Kelly and all of Donna's friends.
> 
> Donna died of typhoid in 1978, alone and unhappy. Her dying wish was to be buried in Clearwater, with her family.
> 
> Her ghost can be seen by children and people who were close to her when she was alive.
> 
> _____________________________
> 
>  
> 
> Raegan's paternal great-grandparents founded the town she grew up in. That's why her last name is the same as the town's. (also I'm lazy but shhh)
> 
> Her dad died of pancreatic cancer when she was three, leaving her mother to support her and her siblings. As soon as Ida was old enough, she went out to do what she could to help support the family, eventually landing a part time job as a waitress at Bill's Bar when she was 19. Aidan, 16, does odd jobs around the town to help out.
> 
> _____________________________
> 
> Mrs. Thomas used to babysit the Barrett girls, before they were sent to the orphanage. Because she was close to Donna, she can see her.
> 
> She's the only adult, other than Raegan, who can see Donna.


End file.
